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Uncategorized

An un-conclusion

Can a blog have a conclusion? By its nature, a blog is dynamic and always new. I have many questions that still remain about the potential benefits and drawbacks of social media spaces for Indigenous people. I have a personal story to tell about how I engage with and learn from Web 2.0 technology, but there is limited academic research on this topic. How does social media allow for learning? How is it compatible with Indigenous world views? What are the limitations of interacting online: when is it detrimental for Aboriginal youth (or adults) to spend too much time in social media spaces? What is does the future hold for intersections between Indigenous people and new technology?

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Medicine

The power of sharing stories

For those of you accustomed to being taken from point A to point B to point C, this presentation may be somewhat difficult to follow. Pueblo expression resembles something like a spider’s web-with many Little threads radiating from the center, crisscrossing one another. As with the web, the structure emerges as it is made, and you must simply listen and trust, as the Pueblo people do, that meaning will be made (Leslie Marmon Siiko, 1996, quoted in Archibald, 1997, p. 10).

When I have allowed my mind to wander late at night pondering the meaning of all that I find from my Aboriginal relations in social media spaces – the words, stories, songs in videos, blogs, tweets and Facebook conversations – I am left with an inkling that there is Medicine at work.

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Family

Maintaining family connections

If someone were to ask me why I have a Facebook account, I would likely reply that keeping in contact with family is the number one reason. My aunties, cousins, sisters, and second cousins all use Facebook as a way to keep in touch, share photographs and maintain a level of connection that would not be possible.

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Political activism

Political activism

Many Indigenous rights issues are finding a platform on social media channels. Garnering support by self-publishing and sharing via social networks is one way that awareness of Indigenous rights is being fostered.

Duncan McCue and Candis Callison, both faculty members with the UBC School of Journalism, describe how social media is transforming Aboriginal politics and activism: Twitter and Facebook allow for Aboriginal people and groups to “subvert mainstream media” (Mccue) and provide a platform  and potential for “media democracy” (Callison) (quotes from CBC podcast Spark). Both McCue and Callison provide examples of political discussions and activism on Facebook and Twitter: Aboriginal community discussions and decisions brought in the open so band members living off-reserve can participate and larger organizations like the Union of BC Indian Chiefs organizing themselves to take action.

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Authentic voice

Authentic voice: Telling our own story

The movie Reel Injun tells the history of representation of Aboriginal people in cinema. Stereotypes and caricatures of Indigenous people are prevalent in the media, whether it be news, Hollywood movies, children’s books, or the television.

Jennifer David, who was involved in the establishment of the Aboriginal People’s Television Network (APTN), and recently participated in a panel discussion called Indigenous Perspectives and Representations in the media, summarizes the stereotypes of Native people in traditional media as falling into one of three categories: victims, villains, or vanquished.

Self-publishing through social media is one avenue that allows for the authentic and diverse voices of Indigenous peoples to be shared, thus challenging these stereotypes and creating new representations of Indigenous peoples in the media.

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Oral tradition

Orality as an element of Web 2.0

Oral tradition among tribal peoples has allowed teachings to be passed on from generation to generation. Elder Larry Grant of the Musqueam people tells his story about the oral history of great earthquakes on the Westcoast of British Columbia: how he remembers as a child being told by his elders about a powerful earthquake that occurred several generations ago. This “story” was “verified” by recent geological evidence of a massive tsunami that occurred on the coast hundreds of years ago.

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Language

Language learning

Numerous Indigenous activists and academics have argued the importance of language preservation and language learning in cultural revitalization for tribal peoples (see Baker-Williams, 2000 for a literature review and discussion of language revitalization an its role in decolonization) . As a Cree woman who knows scarcely twenty-five words in my native language, I have a strong desire to learn the language my father spoke fluently but did not teach to me. Living in Vancouver, with no direct contact with family members who speak Cree, I have found creative and engaging ways to use social media in my language learning pursuits. Specifically, I have added many counts to this Youtube posting of a Cree language song by Carl Quinn, which has the lyrics posted as a notation to the video:

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Web 2.0

Exploring the issues with Duncan McCue

As noted in the previous post, Web 2.0 technology, or social media, is a relatively new form interacting online. As such, there is limited academic research which specifically explores Indigenous peoples’ uses of social media. One of the best resources I found on this topic was a podcast from CBC’s Spark featuring Duncan McCue and Candis Callison, both Aboriginal professors at the UBC School of Journalism:

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Web 2.0

Indigenous uses of Web 2.0

Wikipedia defines Web 2.0 as follows:

A Web 2.0 site may allow users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where people are limited to the passive viewing of content. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies.

Web 2.0 is distinct from Web 1.0 in that the latter was used mainly to share information in a unidirectional fashion: from creator to user. Moreover, before social media tools such as blogs and Twitter emerged, most websites were developed and published by corporations, organizations, and a select few who could master HTML code as well as navigate the process and cost associated with publishing a website. Thus, many of us can recall first generation websites that did not allow for any user interaction, and were essentially an online version of print media.

Fish (2011) uses  examples from American Indian tribes to explore the different uses of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 technologies to share tribal histories. He outlines opportunities and drawbacks for Indigenous uses of both types of technology.

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